Contents

Overview

Someone or something has summoned a horde of cursed Black Kats into the Clockworks. These shadowy beasts hunger for arcane power and raided the Moorcroft Manor Archives' precious collection of magical grimoires. In the wrong hands these ancient tomes could be catastrophic, but it turns out that Black Kats can't read, so they instead decided to just eat them. The residents of Moorcroft Manor would like you to retrieve the Ancient Pages of the magical grimoires that quite likely reside in the stomachs of Black Kats. We'll leave you to figure out just how to recover them...— Forum Post

Gameplay

Arcade

While no special scenario-like rooms show up in the arcade for this event, any kat type monster in any depth 9 or deeper clockworks level where kats can be encountered (arcade or mission) has a small chance of being replaced by a Black Kat.

Prestige

These are only available during a Kataclysmic Confrontation event. These three missions are in a rotation with each other, so only one of these three missions will be available once per day (vs. all three every day during the event). Each mission has 3 floors, all with this similar goal: locate and destroy a Black Kat nest, recovering as many Ancient Pages as you can. These rooms are identified by papers strewn all over the floor and a few partially eaten books. The player should be ready for a fight when stepping onto the party button.

Rewards and Prizes

Players can exchange their Ancient Page tokens with Montague in Moorcroft Manor for Kat Tribe Fetishes and various Kat gear. Players can then use these items to craft various kat-related gear at the Mysterious Alchemy Machine.

Notes

The Black Kats that appear in the final fight of the Prestige missions don't drop Ancient Pages.

Farming Tips

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Since events last a short time, players like to figure out how to most efficiently obtain an event's prizes. For the Kataclysmic Confrontation, this means hunting Black Kats and gathering Ancient Pages. Complete the daily prestige (unless it is Purr Terror, see below) and then hunt for kats in the arcade or specific rank missions. Since black kats can show up anywhere there are kats, it is best to repeatedly search through areas that have a high number of kats to begin with. Candlestick Keeps and certain Scarlet Fortress areas have lots of kats, but these are not always readily available in the arcade. If the player wishes to hunt for kats and obtain pages as quickly as possible, and consistently:

Repeating the first floor of the 9-2 Mission: Alone in the Dark is a good way to go about it. This is depth 24.

The first floor of 8-1 Mission: Weight of Darkness is another option if the player prefers to deal with poison instead of shock. This is depth 19.

Repeating desired floors of the Purr Terror prestige, should it be available while farming, is also a nice option because the first floor of Purr Terror is a D24 Candlestick Keep: Noxious Night, making it a deeper version of the first floor of Weight of Darkness. It is important to not actually complete the prestige until after it has been farmed as desired - but be sure to complete it by the end of the prestige day.

All of these missions have a Candlestick Keep as the first floor and are Tier 3, making them ideal for repeated runs, but players tend to prefer Alone in the Dark or Purr Terror because they are deeper.

Difficulty level has no effect on the number of tokens dropped, but the Book of Dark Rituals is a material and as such likely has a better chance at being found on elite difficulty and in deeper depths, considering how other material drops work.[1] Black Kats drop a number of these Ancient Page tokens in addition to other loot. According to release 2013-01-30, defeated Black Kats will drop:

Black Kats do not spawn at all in Tier 1

1 Ancient Page in Tier 2

3 Ancient Pages in Tier 3

Please note that pages will not drop from a defeated black kat for players who join the party after it has spawned.

Calendar

This event has happened several times. Below is a calendar for each occurrence of this event. Note that not all related content is available for every event - for example, the Katastrophe Prize Box was not available during the 4th event, even though it was introduced in a previous event. Sometimes Katastrophe-related things occur outside of event time frames, as seen with the Kat Suit from the Katastrophe Returns Prize Box.

Gear at the Mysterious Alchemy Machine can be crafted at any time, so long as the player has the required components in their inventory. Montague will also always have items for trade.

"Moorcroft Archives" - an area of Moorcroft Manor has been modified to have bookshelves and the Mysterious Alchemy Machine. Pembrooke and Montague are located here.

Note: the colloquially named "dark ritual" area of Moorcroft Manor with the Konjuring Kat NPC was part of Moorcroft Manor long before the first Kataclysmic Confrontation. It was modified for Margrel as of this event.